


Senator Organa's Last Speech to the Senate of the New Republic

by AlienofDoom



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU with Bloodlines, Gen, Leia has some of her mother's oratory skills in her yet, POV First Person, speech
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 15:04:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8290129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlienofDoom/pseuds/AlienofDoom
Summary: 28 years after the Battle of Yavin, Senator Leia Organa gave the following speech to the assembled Senate of the New Republic. It is often cited not only as an exemplary example of oratory skill, but also as a primary predecessor to the First Order conflict which would engulf the Galaxy scant years later.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Not Kathleen Kennedy, yadda, yadda, yadda. Do not own.

Thank you, Chancellor.

I look around and I see faces which I've worked all my adult life beside, but also I see those new to these chambers. To both of you I speak today, but I have different hopes as to which you will take from my words.

I stand here today not as a senator, which is a title I feel more and more ill-fitting as time goes by. I stand here not even as a politician. Not as a soldier, or a rebel, or a... or a mother.

Today I am a citizen. And I stand here to say what any right-thinking citizen of this republic would if they had access to these chambers.

There is a threat on the edges of our galaxy. More malicious than the Separatists; more insidious than the Empire; more dangerous than the Hutts. You know the organisation of which I speak for it has touched us all in some way, even if we refuse to acknowledge it.

The First Order has repeatedly shown blatant disregard for the terms of the Galactic Concordance, which they are still bound to as the self-proclaimed successors to Palpatine's Empire.

You may think that I am stating the obvious.

I am.

I am because it seems that the governance here of the New Republic has – whether by will or by incompetence – disregarded the threat The First Order poses. When ships go missing near the borders of our space, we seem all to eager to declare the pilots incompetent, or their astro-charts incomplete, or their crews mutinous. When reports arrive that great ships are being built deep within their space – great ships that can only ever serve to further drive the engines of war – we seem too desperate to place those reports at the end of the speaking list, to shove them into the backs of our desks, to refuse to discuss the ghost that looms over us.

War...

Some of you here have had the blessing not to know war as has too often plagued our galaxy. You have grown and lived without the fear that stormtroopers will descend upon your planet in such numbers as to darken the sky with their deployment. Without the terror of seeing the planet upon which you were raised, where every being you'd ever grown-up calling 'friend', where your mother, your father, your life had been be destroyed in an instant on the whims of a cruel and evil tyrant.

It seems that ever since I've been alive, war has been the one constant in my life. I was born from the Clone Wars to fight against the Empire. My story stretches from Geonosis to Ryloth. From Yavin to Jakku, and I fear that another planet will be added to that list.

I do not wish for war, but I know Snoke, as do many of you here. Can any of you look at me and tell me that that man does not desire conflict? That he doesn't want to bathe the galaxy in blood and darkness to further his mad ambitions?

War is coming, and I have fought long and hard in this chamber to prepare us for it. I argued against the military cuts. I argued against leniency for those breaches of the treaty.

It has only been recently that I've come to understand what I was too single-minded to see before. Just like me, none of you wish for war, but too many refuse to see it's inevitability.

It is thus that I am – as of today – officially resigning from my post as a senator of the New Republic.

I will take the burden upon myself to best prepare the galaxy to fight the war that is assuredly coming. Any of you who see reason as I do are welcome to join me.

It will not be easy, but we must be prepared.

It will not be easy, but war has never been easy.

We must remember the lessons of the Clone Wars. Palpatine became emperor because no one stood to fight against him. There were those, like former Chancellor Mothma, who did their part, but it was too little, too late.

I **will not** let the same happen again! I will not allow Snoke to take this galaxy that we have spent so long trying to rebuild, and plunge it back into darkness! I was not elected to stand by and watch my people die!

*Ahem*

So – though I leave these chambers today simply as a citizen of this New Republic – I ask for each of you to think long and hard about the people you've sworn to protect and how you plan to do so.

Because like it or not, war seems our destiny.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come join me @fandomhorse on Tumblr. I reblog Star Wars stuff there too (now if only any of it was any good...)


End file.
